Personality redux
Wow! Yesterday’s post spawned way more discussion than I expected.Pollen count has passed 4000. Not sick yet, still waiting for Dragonball posts.I forgot about the Easter cake, that makes four.The disagreements I mentioned usually stick with me so much because either they strike at my core beliefs (as the critique did about my relative desirability
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First, you manage to navigate the city and be plenty active using public transportation now, which is fine. But your lack of a car would certainly be a detriment if you were to meet a lady who doesn't live convenient to public transit. It puts the onus on her to always provide the transportation, which some ladies might find off-putting or a negative to a potential relationship with you. If we lived in a place such as NYC, where most people use public transit, this would be less of a concern, but seeing as this is Atlanta, your lack of transportation may be counting against you.
Secondly, and I really hope you don't find this to be a judgement, I simply want to be helpful - your condo isn't exactly lady friendly in the way of cleanliness. As a often-messy person, I know I frequently didn't even consider inviting potential suitors over to my place if it was in a state of disarray for fear it would count against me. Most geeky ladies are smart, forward-thinking feminist types I would wager, at least to some degree. I wouldn't have even considered my wonderful beau and I living together if he didn't share my ideas about sharing household chores equally (I'll be honest, he's better about them than I am).
While your home is for you, and you can live however you like, it doesn't present you as a bastion of home-cleanliness either. This may also count against you. I know I would second guess dating you if we had just met and you invited me over. Not because clutter and lack of cleaning makes you a bad person. But my own lack of cleaning skills would mean that cohabitation would likely be very messy, and nobody actually wants to live in that type of surroundings. And even if were not a naturally messy person myself, it would still make me doubt your willingness and follow through in helping out when it came to household cleaning chores. The feminist in me would NEVER stand for that.
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As to cleanliness...my husband is a messy slob and I am a germphobic bleach nazi (I was raised by a microbiologist, it's not my fault). One of our most difficult conflicts in living together was raising his cleanliness standards and relaxing mine in order to meet at some reasonable level. This worked in an apartment. However, we almost didn't buy a house, because I was not convinced he would continue to help me clean regularly due to increased square footage and time requirement (he mentally inflates how much time it takes to sweep a floor). I was certainly NOT going to do it all on my own. It was a big fight. Food for thought. You want to consider whether it looks like living with you will be lots of effort re:cleaning the house. Women get judged for not being very tidy. If you're messy as a woman, then you're probably also a crazy cat lady and a hoarder; you're sloppy and careless. It's okay and even adorable for men to be untidy, apparently, because they're busy absent-minded-professors doing important things.
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However, I can rent for when it's needed, and for seldom use, renting a BMW is cheaper (and more responsible for various reasons) than owning a lemon.
It's a potential drawback, I agree, but for the most part I don't think it's as important a factor as my not asking people out.
The cleanliness (you met Magdalena, right?) is actually one of the things about which I think my critic (and both of ye) are right, and want to change - both for organization and sanitary reasons. Maybe not up to bleach NAZI standards, but better. There are some difficulties in changing habits and my time management, but I think it is improving (albeit slowly).
The adorable absent-minded professor thing: I can see it as similar to the shoe-tying thing, in that it just isn't as much of a priority as all the other things I could be doing.
Something pointing in the cleanly direction, someone asked about roommating, and I mentally jumped towards making a chore list and talking about expectations with her. My current cohabitors are cleaner than the potheads, but they still leave stuff all over the place.
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Not that I shouldn't clean it up in case of that eventuality, of course, just that it's not currently a cause of singularity.
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Cleanliness habits can be difficult to change. I admit, I could happily spend 3-4 h on a weekend day, every week, scouring my house. That is unreasonable for most people. But looking at a messy kitchen or bathroom, especially, causes me indescribable levels of anxiety. My husband and I have found a happy medium where 3 weeks out of a month we spend about 30-45 minutes on a weekend tidying and cleaning, and then one weekend out of a month we spend 90 minutes deep cleaning. When we lived in a smaller place, it took even less time, obviously.
Just start small. Try for a full month to change and set a single habit before you add another. Example: wipe and disinfect the kitchen sink every Sunday morning, or whatever...Or get some hampers and presort your dirty laundry as you change clothes. Then it's harder to talk yourself out of doing it, because its something that literally takes 2 minutes of your time.
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